On Saturday Chelley Ryan wrote in the Star supporting Jeremy Corbyn as the leader of a new party of the left: “I’m warning Corbyn not to listen to that voice in his head that tells him he’s not special and someone else would be better placed to lead a new party.” I could not help thinking of the scene in Monty Python’s Life of Brian when one fervent follower insists that Brian is the messiah: “BRIAN: I'm not the Messiah! ARTHUR: I say you are, Lord, and I should know. I've followed a few.”
Jeremy would be the first to deny any claim to being special and the number of socialist alternatives led by charismatic leaders that have collapsed, not so much despite their leaders but because of them, lends weight to Jeremy’s wisdom – from Jimmy Maxton, leader of the ILP in the 1930s, to Tommy Sheridan who led the initially successful Scottish Socialist Party till he stood down in 2004 and the party quickly collapsed as an electoral force.
The question of a new left party and its leadership has of course been exercising the left since Zarah Sultana MP announced on 3rd July that she would be leaving Labour to form a new party in a joint leadership arrangement with Jeremy Corbyn. For many on the left, this is unmitigated good news. Sick of Labour’s attacks on the poor and disabled and its fulsome support for imperialism, the possibility of voting for a left alternative that might challenge austerity and war is understandably extremely attractive.
The question of course is whether a new party would be able to do that. Much has been made by the left of The More In Common poll that suggests that a Corbyn-led party would get 10% of the vote in a General Election. Less has been said about who would be the major beneficiary of a new left party’s intervention - Reform. Every other “left of centre” party loses vote share - Labour, the Greens and the SNP. On the SNP, the predicted reduction in their vote must be premised on the assumption that the new left party would support Scottish independence. Since its membership in Scotland would almost certainly heavily comprise the radical independence movement, now disillusioned by the SNP, this is a reasonable assumption. Although there has been no polling to assess this, it almost certainly means that the Scottish Greens who also support independence might well take a bigger hit than their English and Welsh counterparts.
Scottish Independence would therefore become an important, but difficult policy area for the new party, immediately denying it the support of 50% of the Scottish electorate who oppose independence and dividing left support for independence across three parties. And its not the only difficult issue. The four independent MPs who would be seeking re-election would no doubt want to make sure they were offering a manifesto that was in tune with their constituents’ wishes.
In a Commons vote, four out of the group of five independent MPs supported the Tories’ position on retaining the tax breaks for private schools. Jeremy Corbyn did not vote. Explaining his decision Ayoub Khan MP said: “In Birmingham Perry Barr there is an all-girls faith school where parents earning just above minimum wage secure places for their children. We already have an enormous problem in the constituency with the secondary school sector, where waiting lists are somewhere in the region of 100 places.”
And in a Novara media podcast Shockat Adam MP, one of the five Independents said: “Can you not have a rent policy without alienating landlords? Can you not do that? I mean, if we’re going to say all landlords are evil, then what will happen to rented properties? They won’t rent them out.”
These are not arguments you would expect to hear advanced in a socialist party so while it is reasonable to assume that there will be large swathes of agreement in a new left party on austerity and on Gaza, for example, there may be deep disagreement on what for many on the left are critical areas like trans rights. Zarah Sultana, for example is a committed supporter.
But if the new party is to have any electoral traction it will need those the independent MPs, because they are most likely win their seats and give the new party parliamentary visibility. 10% across the board does not guarantee a single seat in our electoral system. Currently the independent MPs are located primarily in areas where there is intense support for the Palestinian cause. Excluding the The More In Common opinion poll of support for what, after all, was an imagined left party, as yet without policies, there is no evidence from opinion polls or by-elections that there is widespread latent support for a socialist alternative; rather there is seething resentment at the continued failure of a Labour government to alleviate financial distress. The two are not the same.
Meanwhile the left in the Labour party has begun to show that it can fight back, witness the PiP rebellion, and Labour’s soft left discussing, at the recent Compass conference, the creation of a new internal organisation to exert pressure on Starmer.
Even if Jeremy wanted to be a political messiah and he doesn’t, it is not messiahs that the left needs. It is a clear-headed strategy that can deliver political power at British level so that we can get to grips with the real enemy – no, not the Judean People’s Front – the fortress of the British capitalist class, the City of Westminster.
This article appeared in the Morning Star on 10th July 2025
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